HOME’S ABOUT ITS PEO­PLE TOO

IT WAS DEAD silent when I walked into the o ce on Mon­day. Ann wasn’t in and no laugh­ter erupted from her cor­ner. Siew Gek wasn’t in the pantry wa­ter­ing her plants. And there was no Matthew to call me “ah girl”.

The fi rst I see of any­one as he strides past my door is his shoes. Fash­ion­ably white sneak­ers is a re­cur­ring theme. Usu­ally it was Melvin, do­ing his rounds. Some­times he dropped in for a chat. Now, the ath­leisure footwear I see are Jac­quie’s.

The sound of Laura’s wedges thumping on the car­pet, I’ll al­ways re­mem­ber. I smile at her when­ever she saun­ters by. Ane? Oddly, her shoes squeak (we’ve talked about this over whisky). Jaime marches like a gen­eral. Zara, Alethia, Mary and Mel are the coolest nin­jas around. Lion­nel and Aaron could even rock those tabi shoes, whereas Suhana much rather wears ba­nana or pineap­ple prints.

Candice used to tot­ter on heels, now she’s a gym rat like Cle­ment, and wears black train­ers all the time. Si­mon opts for Snoopy bed­room slip­pers, while Dy­lan oc­ca­sion­ally slips socked feet into black rub­ber slip­pers with “Ba­len­ci­aga” and “Supreme” scrawled in white marker.

Dear Reader, this isn’t your typ­i­cal ed­i­tor’s let­ter. And it might get me into a wee bit of trou­ble — with those I men­tion, failed to men­tion, and those who sim­ply don’t see the point in what I’m say­ing.

But to­day isn’t your av­er­age day, week or month. Pres­tige has turned 18. And as part of the cel­e­bra­tions, these 304 pages have been put to­gether to in­form and en­ter­tain all of you who have nur­tured us in this jour­ney.

But if I may quote Dick Lee, “Home’s about its peo­ple too”. So if you aren’t al­ready on fi rst- name ba­sis, please al­low me to also in­tro­duce Johnny, Cather­ine, Audrey, Mar­ion and Thomas. Each of them, ev­ery one of the above, and oth­ers in editorial, art, sales, mar­ket­ing, cor­po­rate and ad­min­is­tra­tion, PIN and AM make the en­tire Pres­tige uni­verse pos­si­ble.

Pres­tige has also added mem­bers who’ll take print into a new decade. You know them; they’re fa­mil­iar faces. Lena and Grace need lit­tle in­tro­duc­tion — wel­come!

With Pres­tige now of age — it’s le­gal for us to drink, drive, and even own a sword (it’s true!) — there’s no bet­ter time for this de facto guardian to take a step of her own. I’ve walked side by side and in the foot­steps of the fam­ily for the last decade, and it’s now time to fl y the nest. I’m in­cred­i­bly ex­cited for what my fu­ture holds. A heart­felt thank you to ev­ery­one who’s wit­nessed my/our jour­ney. Now ex­cuse me, I’m o¤ for drinks with the kakis.